Aristeia
by Girl Who Writes
Summary: "You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain." The Lady Sif is broken in a million different ways to pay for his sins.
1. i don't ever think about death

**Title:** Aristeia

**Author:** Girl Who Writes

**Characters:** Sif, Sif/Loki

**Word Count:** 472

**Rating:** M

**Genre:** Horror, Angst, Drama

**Summary: **"You think you know pain? He will make you long for something as sweet as pain." The Lady Sif is broken in a million different ways to pay for his sins.

**Notes: **This takes place in a Post-Avengers, possible Post-Dark World.

This started out as a more conventional chapter fic, but I found myself experimenting and it evolved into something else, something more interesting. I was really nervous about posting it because it's so different but I really enjoy writing it, so voila!

I know very little about any sort of comic-canon; most of my information (especially for the Thor-specific characters) is gleaned from the MCU, from Tumblr discussions and various headcanons.

Thank you for reading!

**Disclaimer:** The MCU belongs to Marvel and Disney, and I make no profits from this fan-based venture.

* * *

**part one: **_i don't ever think about death; it's alright if you do_

She does not know the passing of time.

She does not know where she is.

All she knows is pain.

And she cares for nothing else.

He strips her flesh from her body, her muscle from bone.

He burns her body black, makes her bones creak with ice.

She lost her warrior's stoicism a long time ago.

Now she screams her throat raw and bloody.

But she does not speak.

Oh, she prays to Yggdrasil. She repeats names under her breath like a child's prayer. She finds herself whispering to a death that never comes.

He learns quickly which faces to wear to cause the most perfect of suffering.

He wears Thor's face, grinning in feral pleasure, as he smashes her bones to splinters and dust with Mjolnir. He wears Frigga's as magic and poisons burn away at her. He wears Fandral's as he held her down.

And the terrible Loki's as he carved her up, knives flashing and descending so very slowly into her flesh. He would butcher her almost intimately, his teeth flashing white and bloody, as he cut his path downwards.

She knows in that terrible, raw, alive place buried deep in what remains of her mind that it is not him, not them.

But that is such brittle knowledge when her blood and flesh hang from his knife.

That sort of pain, there is no sound. There is heavy ragged breathing and bright lights behind shuttered eyelids. It is words on her lips that she cannot remember and cannot understand.

Pain is sharp and it is dull and it is exhausting. She has learnt how many different ways she can bleed - the scarlet stains smeared on rock; the flicker and silent death of all hope; the bitter choked scream of will.

She is so tired of seeing her closest and dearest carve her up with so much savage pleasure. She is tired of the taste of blood in her mouth. She is tired of fighting for her next breath, for knowing what it feels like to have her body broken around her over and over again.

He breaks her and then he brings her back, healed imperfectly so that she might remember, so the next time it will hurt more.

She chokes on blood and her own teeth and she glares up at him, the last of any sort of obstinance she might gather, through hair matted with blood and filth. And her rough, raw voice asks, "What do you want?" It still bears the ghosts of steel, of determination and strength, and that makes it impossibly unfamiliar.

He leans close to her, his stinking breath foul in her face. He grins at her as his hands close over her broken and burnt arms, holding her in place.

"There is nothing I want from you, Shieldmaiden," he laughs.


	2. some part of you, it's too small to lose

**Title:** Aristeia

**Author:** Girl Who Writes

**Characters:** Sif, Sif/Loki

**Word Count:** 968

**Rating:** M

**Genre:** Horror, Angst, Drama

**Summary: **What do they expect when they find her?

She doesn't know and she doesn't care. (Righteous fury, she remembers that one. Horror, she is intimate with that.)

**Notes: **This takes place in a Post-Avengers, possible Post-Dark World.

And it continues, because I am a masochist, and because I always liked fixing broken things.

**Disclaimer:** The MCU belongs to Marvel and Disney, and I make no profits from this fan-based venture.

* * *

**part two:** _ some part of you, it's too small to to lose_

What do they expect when they find her?

She doesn't know and she doesn't care.

It's been a long time since she's been able to move. He broke her leg, the white bone tearing through her skin, to keep her in one place. The one thing he will not heal. If she cannot stand, she cannot run.

He still likes to pretend she has somewhere to run to, to remind her once again that there is something beyond his games. But she is nothing, she knows this now. She is a toy, a way to fill in time - however it passes here - whilst he waits for the things that matter.

She is slumped there, her face against cool rock. She is nothing now. She has no thoughts or wishes, hopes or fears. She has no shame or dishonour.

She stopped trusting herself some time ago. Her memories war against each other, and she can no longer tell the true from the false. She is no longer certain about anything.

She is not even completely convinced that she is not already dead, and this is her penance - after all, she has a jumble of memories that seem true enough that she should, must, repent for.

The one who finds her does not expect violence, she knows that from the start.

She is sleeping when he touches her, clothed fingers at her throat. She lunges at him as her eyes open. He is a gentle man, she knows that from the way he jumps back, swathed in blinding blue, red and white that looks obscene amongst the dark and the dirt.

He calls for someone and raises his hands slowly, but she does not respond, but curls in on herself again. She is so tired.

He speaks to her again, and she opens her eyes to see him, crouched beside her but so carefully not touching, talking in a low voice that makes her chest feel too tight and her eyes hurt. He produces a slim silver pouch, and offers it to her carefully.

Water. It's water.

Her dry tongue slides over the blood and broken skin of her lips and she drinks slowly. Not for a good reason, because she wants to pour that water down her throat, to be purified and baptised in the most hopeful thing she can imagine anymore. No, because he caught that wisp of a thought once, sometime closer to the beginning than the now, and turned all the stale, murky water she was offered to dirt and sand.

And then there are more of them.

She drops the pouch, and the water spills, as she tries to move away from the ones that approach her.

She recognizes their faces from her pain - bones cracking, breaking, piercing under the bulk of the hammer; the glee as his knives slice so cleanly through skin and fat and muscle.

Somehow, she finds her hands digging into the arm of the one who brought her the water, her fingers scrabbling at the heavy fabric he wears. He is not a violent man, she knew that when he approached her, when he checked her for life before anything else. He carries no weapons but a shield.

She had a shield once. And a glaive.

He looks at her, surprise written so clearly on his face, and pain on the two that have approached. The one carrying the hammer reaches for her, and she tries to move away, but pain rips through her again, and the raw, animalistic cry sends all three men stepping back as she curls in on herself again.

A few drops of water, and hope has dulled the memory of pain; she disgusts herself. They are here with their hammer and their knives; let them carve her up as they have so many times before. She will take it now and again, one hundred times over. She has and she will. That is all.

But this time, there are careful hands urging her to sit up again. The man with the water, his face set in a mask that she cannot decipher. Righteous fury, she remembers that one. Horror, she is intimate with that. And something softer, gentler that she doesn't care for.

He speaks but she does not hear, watching as more join the group - a lady with startling red hair, an archer, someone constructed entirely of metal that brings memories of sand and the baking sun and a massive metal man that breathes flame.

She shrinks against her protector, as words fly over heard, an argument.

The one with the knives, swathed in black and emerald, and watching her so carefully she can see him counting the scars, the angry red lines that cross her body indiscriminately. He looks at her with something she understands but will not let bubble to the surface. Soon, he will be back, and they will die or disappear, because she hasn't decided yet whether this is another one of his tricks.

After all, the first lesson was that she was nothing. Had nothing.

That had taken so very long to learn.

The one in black, he moves so suddenly, so urgently that she has no time to do more than flinch at how close he is, at the flash of silver at his belt.

His hands are rough on her cheeks as he cups her face, his thumb brushing so gently against her face. Her hand shakes as she reaches up to wrap it around his wrist.

She recognizes the look on his face now. It is grief and hope and affection and regret.

"Oh, Lady," he says to her, so gently and sorrowfully, and she just hurts so badly.


	3. will they remember to tell it right?

**Title:** Aristeia

**Author:** Girl Who Writes

**Characters:** Sif, Sif/Loki

**Word Count:** 1453

**Rating:** M

**Genre:** Horror, Angst, Drama

**Summary: **She is so tired of this fear, that lays so heavy upon her shoulders. There might have been a time when fear was something easily discarded but she will not think of those things that have come before. Not now. Not yet.

**Notes: **This takes place in a Post-Avengers, possible Post-Dark World.

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to read, leave kudos or review. It means a lot to me.

This was originally written as the final chapter, but I've since continued onwards, consider this the end of the first arc - more questions are asked and a few of them even answered in the next 'arc'.

Anyway, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Disclaimer:** The MCU belongs to Marvel and Disney, and I make no profits from this fan-based venture.

* * *

**part three: **_ when all of this makes the news, will they remember to tell it right?_

They take her away from the dust and the dirt, from the darkness and the rock. She can listen to them a little now, captures strands and sounds and pieces together these people who remembered her.

She cowers when the hammer is swung so close to her, her breathing a fragile thing, shattering a chain she never notice looped so tightly around one wrist, blood and skin flaking away as it is pried off and tossed aside.

It is the Captain, the one who brought her the water, who so gently gathers her in his arms, so concerned with her pain and her ruined leg. It is Loki - that name is like a chime, a death knell in her head but she is not ready to put the fragments in order yet - who tucks a cape around her.

And they leave in a moment of bright lights and the acrid sting of magic on the back of her tongue.

They go to a place called The Tower, and something about that makes her feel well guarded, at least, because safe is something that is long gone and lost for her.

But there is too much light, too much sound.

There are more people, wide-eyed and horror-struck and she is tired and wants to be left alone now. There are three new men that leave her rigid in fear, remembering the blows of a mace, the dull strike of an axe, the slash of a sword. She cannot look in their eyes, cannot hear their words, so she does not.

She wants water and sleep, but is offered neither, is ferried down into the depths, to a cold metal table under harsh, blinding lights that leave her squinting and her head pounding and she is finally sick, coughing around the scant mouthful of water as she is surrounded by people once again, their lips moving in words she doesn't hear.

The one who bears the hammer approaches her and flinches as she shrinks back at the sight of him. He is so careful, as he meets her gaze and places the hammer across the room from her, where she can see it.

She is unsure whether that gesture is meant to be a threat, a reminder or a comfort.

He holds her arms against her body firmly, enough that she cannot move and it is enough to make it hard for her to breathe.

The one who bears the axe holds her leg down, and the Captain looks at her with eyes that apologise before he pulls and pushes the bone of her leg back into place, tearing the skin more and the pain is a live thing that swallows her whole and she screams, and chokes and struggles away from all the hands that hold her down. Her good leg swings out, catches the Captain in the chest; the one who bears the axe jumps backwards before it catches him, with the hint of a hopeful smile on his face. She buries her elbow into the one who bears the hammer, and he grunts, releasing her.

She is so tired of this fear, that lays so heavy upon her shoulders. There might have been a time when fear was something easily discarded but she will not think of those things that have come before. Not now. Not yet. Everything is too raw.

The Doctor is calm, soothing, speaking to her and offering her something. A stone of gold, with veins of quartz and impurities that smell of something that allows the tension to flee, the silent threat of the hammer to disperse.

Healing stones. These she knows, remembers. Crushed and scattered, they knit flesh, smooth over scars, brush away the hurts. They are a promise without words, and she nods at the Doctor, her hands closing carefully around the one he has given her.

It takes time. The hurts remaining on her body are numerous, hidden under her ragged clothing. The Doctor is patient, and the smell of the crushed stones is something leafy that makes her relax some more, running her fingers over the scars as they slowly sink back into her flesh and vanish.

They piece her body back together slowly, carefully, wrapping her in rough cloth bandages to remind her of weakness. The white of the bandages is startling against the dirty stains of her skin.

Then there is the Widow. She likes the Widow without knowing her - her title alone makes her think of a survivor, of the last one standing, and that is something she respects to the bone. She brings soft, clean clothing and understanding without pity.

The Doctor helps her stand for the first time in so dreadfully long. They ache as she tries to center her weight, and her first steps are clumsy. Reassurances rush around her, that she will heal and get stronger. That it's been so long, it will take time.

Time lost all meaning a long time ago.

For all intents and purposes, she is wrecked.

The Captain takes her arm with a kind smile and they slowly make their way to the strange box that will take them to the top of the tower again. When her feet falter, catch and slip, he holds her up without a word.

There are so many people when they arrive in the right room, but they are not her focus. They are more words and pitying gazes. Her attention is upon the window, the light. The window stretches across the entire wall, revealing a blue sky streaked with pink and gold, a sprawling city of shining grey buildings, a perfect green expanse in the center. The Captain obligingly escorts her to the window, where she can press her bandaged hand against the glass and consider where she is now.

Perhaps she should feel relief, gratitude, hope. Emotions that bury nothing, that are all weakness and debt.

She still flinches when the one who bears the hammer appears at her shoulder, shrinks back as his hand rests heavily upon her shoulder. She is so aware of him, of his violence, that his words sound very loud, very sudden and urgent.

"We are in Midgard," he says. "Where I came when I was banished." He smiles at her with hope so obvious it is a tangible thing. She just looks back at the sky.

"Do you not remember? The disastrous excursion to Jotunheim?" His hope is stretched thin now.

The Captain shifts at her left side and says something; suddenly she is in the grip and care of the one who bears the hammer. But he does not draw her from the window - he lets her stand before the window and gaze at this place called Midgard as the sky slowly turns from blue to pink and gold to darkness. He watches he the entire time, his eyes scoring her bruised face.

She feels her lips move in the old mantras, the ones that kept the agony from breaking her entirely in the beginning, nonsensical words that are just sounds, and only when the great city is wreathed in darkness does she look back up at her companion.

His eyes are shiny, reflecting light and something akin to guilt.

"It took us far too long," he says so quietly, carefully that she wants to wrench out of his cautious grip. "But we came for you, Sif. You're safe now."

She does not say a word.


	4. the silence takes you

**Title:** Aristeia

**Author:** Girl Who Writes

**Characters:** Sif, Sif/Loki

**Word Count:** 1262

**Rating:** M

**Genre:** Horror, Angst, Drama

**Summary: **She is so tired of this fear, that lays so heavy upon her shoulders. There might have been a time when fear was something easily discarded but she will not think of those things that have come before. Not now. Not yet.

**Notes: **This takes place in a Post-Avengers, possible Post-Dark World.

And here we are, at the beginning of the second 'arc', slowly piecing things together, especially the residents of the Tower that Sif is not familiar with. Thank you for reading!

Anyway, thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Disclaimer:** The MCU belongs to Marvel and Disney, and I make no profits from this fan-based venture.

* * *

**part four:** _but if the silence takes you, then i hope it takes me too._

Three days, two hours and eleven minutes.

The first time that the Man of Iron speaks to her (he looks her in the eyes and gestures to himself, saying, "Tony," so slowly and clearly she hears it the first time), he gives her a watch. It is heavy with neat silver hands and ticks loudly enough that the other people stare at it.

She thinks that perhaps he might understand that the only thing worse than counting time is losing time. He claps her on the back before he leaves, and it might hurt, but it hurts a little bit less each day.

Her body, at least.

Her mind is still a trap, a prison, a lock.

That's safe, for now.

Three days, two hours, fourteen minutes.

There is the Lady, a tall, sweet woman who seems to be the Queen of this tower, that escorted her to quarters that first night, with Thor (that name still hurts every time she things or hears it; every time she flinches, he flinches) escorting her carefully and Loki, the shadow, hovering at their heels.

For the first time in her memory, she is alone. She knows that Thor and Loki wait in her quarters, leaving her to bathe. She tries not to think of them as jailers as she sinks into the water, hissing as it meets the remaining wounds on her body.

Steam rises from the water as she watches the dirt and grime and blood lift from her skin. She sees the hurts, old and new, clearly; the healing stones were only used upon the worst of her. Where the bone of her leg broke through her flesh, the scar is pink and thin; there are hundreds of narrow marks upon her, and she can remember each cut perfectly.

She sinks beneath the water as it cools, letting it cover her face and mouth and nose; this is peace. This is something she wished for in the longest moments in the place of stone and dirt.

She surfaces, her hair sticking to her face and her body scrubbed clean. She sits there for as long as she can, until the water is cold and she is shivering and then, somehow, she dredges up the strength to stand once again.

Three days, twenty minutes, four seconds.

They hover around her constantly, reforming and reconfiguring every so often. They are slowly working out patterns she does not know; that she offers the closest thing to trust she still carries to the Doctor, the Captain and the Widow. She recoils from Thor and flinches away from those that call themselves the Warriors Three. She watches Loki and measures the distance between them with haunted precision. The others are kind noises - Tony and the watch, the Lady offering her a space to be alone; the Girl who talks too fast and seems to know her, the tiny, mostly-absent Scientist, the Archer who appears in corners, up high.

They feed her eventually and she eats slowly, waiting for it to turn to dust and bone in her mouth, but instead it is too much, trailing a hot path to her hollow stomach and she is spectacularly sick again, coughing and gagging, and when it happens every time she tries to eat, she just stops.

That disturbs them so much, and she thinks about telling them that it doesn't matter. Her wounds are healing, and she has water - as much as she wants, and she drinks it like she is dying.

Was. Was dying.

She spends her first days (three days, thirty two minutes, forty six seconds) curled in a ball in the room they all find themselves. She watches the sky from her cocoon, doesn't listen to the words overhead and listens to her watch count time.

She watches the Archer watch her. He nods at her once, his expression unreadable, but it is not pity or sorrow, so she nods back.

When she is left to her quarters that very first night, they argued and bickered and rationalised about who would stay with her, until the Widow sent them all away (they all call the Widow by different names, she cannot decipher which is the correct one. Yet.)

She proved them all right, though, when she sleeps and the panic comes bubbling out; when his foul breath taints her dreams and their visages come to torture her again; hammer, blade, hands. She begs and pleads and argues and when she wakes up, it is Loki clutching her with wild eyes, trying to break the spell.

Instead, she shoves him away and scrambles from the bed, to crouch in the corner with her head in her arms, the walls firm at her back, the healing stone in her hand.

It… it smells like home.

Three days forty minutes seventeen seconds.

The tower is quiet now. Everyone is tucked away, and she is blissfully alone to consider the skies of Midgard, a comb in her jittery hands. The La...Pepper convinced them that the voice in the sky was capable of watching over her for a time, and when she finds the words, she will thank Lady Pepper for that.

Perhaps she will be able to sleep, with all the light in the room, spilling into every corner.

Instead, one of the Warriors appears, lingering uneasily in the corner of her sight, with an expression she refuses to decipher. She does not acknowledge him - he might still leave her alone.

Instead, he walks carefully into her direct gaze, sitting a careful distance from her, and gestures for the forgotten comb.

"Allow me," is all he says, and she passes it to him with lingering caution. He gestures for her to turn her back to him, to allow him to the tangle mass of hair she has been ignoring.

She doesn't know why she does it. Water and so much softness (clothing, bedding, an impossibly amount of bandages) has tempered her fear. But she turns. And grips so tightly to the cushion in her lap that she feels she has torn it.

She has.

He talks as he fixes her hair, words that do not fly over her head, but reach her softly and do not demand a response or acknowledgement. Her grip slowly loosens, as he tells her of how he learnt to arrange a lady's coiffure. He chuckles during it, and she knows these are stories she has heard before, as he carefully knots elaborate braids.

Then he is finished, and the comb is placed innocently on the table beside her, and he reaches for her hand - a bold move, one that startles her enough that she stares at it, the weight and resistance feeling akin to a burn.

"If we had any inkling, my lady," he says in perfect sincerity, "you never would have gone alone. Any of us would have taken your place immediately."

It is instinct when she tightens her hand around his, and meets his gaze.

It is so easy to be horrified at the idea of such cruelty upon someone else.

"When you are ready," he continues, his eyes seeking hers out with such kindness, the horror of what she remembers seems utterly breakable, "Loki can help you with your memories."

And then he leaves her as silently as he arrived, with her hair arranged like a lady of court, her lips numb and her mind reeling.

Fandral. He is Fandral. They were friends. She remembers that.

* * *

**AN: **_It is my personal headcanon that Fandral is very, very good at arranging ladies hair, having to help his companions the morning after ^_^ I like the idea that when they were young, Fandral would have to fix Sif's hair before they were presented during formal occasions because she was hopeless at it._

_Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it!_


	5. thoughts that catch my troubled head

**Title:** Aristeia

**Author:** Girl Who Writes

**Characters:** Sif, Sif/Loki

**Word Count:** 1392

**Rating:** M

**Genre:** Horror, Angst, Drama

**Summary: **She is so tired of this fear, that lays so heavy upon her shoulders. There might have been a time when fear was something easily discarded but she will not think of those things that have come before. Not now. Not yet.

**Notes: **I just want to thank everyone for the lovely reviews. I haven't had time to reply to them yet but I plan to sit down in the next day or two and reply to every single one. Thank you all for taking the time to review and leave kudos. You are awesome and lovely and amazing.

I will also take the time to mention that this arc is going to be much longer than the first one, and this fic is going to be much longer than I ever anticipated.

Thank you for reading!

**Disclaimer:** The MCU belongs to Marvel and Disney, and I make no profits from this fan-based venture.

* * *

**part five**_it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled head_

Five days, twenty two hours and three minutes.

She was wrong. It is getting better; or at the very least, easier. When she walks, it is with a limp and it is so very slow, but she can hold herself up and move around without someone hovering, trying so hard not to touch her - or without her grip embossing itself onto feeble furniture and railings. Without buckling and curling in on herself.

The sky is no less mesmerising, it's just the things under that perfect sky have been brought sharply into focus.

Food, too, has been brought to focus. It was the girl who talked too much - the Lady Darcy - who understood the quickest, as the others simpered at her to eat, just a mouthful, when it burns on the way down and on the way back up.

Lady Darcy watches her with quick, intelligent eyes and a resourcefulness she wonders if anyone else has noted. Against the strongest of wills, she is victorious with her words, with her arguments. Lady Darcy is sly and sweet and careful. She is always smiling and laughing, and she would do anything, anything, to make sure that girl doesn't ever stop smiling, that she is never given a reason to.

Darcy brings her small things, at first. Mostly brightly-coloured drinks in frost-edged glasses, because they have all noticed how she prefers the cold (having her body licked black by both flames and ice, it is the fire she remembers so clearly when she sleeps and she cannot bear it anymore, must ward herself against it).

Then there are thin soups, little more than beverages, served tepid (Darcy is kind, and says it is because her hands still shake sometimes, and not because she cannot bring herself to touch anything radiating heat, the old fear of her skin sticking and melting and cracking into fine ash...). Then there are thick, whipped drinks and sweets. Darcy brings her Midgardian candy in enormous bags and brushes off criticisms from the Doctor (Bruce) and the Captain (Steve).

The sweetness is a reassurance that Darcy cannot know to offer, against the memories of choking on blood and dirt, ash and teeth; tastes that still linger, reminding and threatening. The candy joins her in her soft, broken little world of clothing that hangs loosely, of blankets and a few remaining bandages, of light and soft voices and the ticking of the second hand.

She sees the hurt in the eyes of the ones she knew in a time before this. They see her reach for the Captain or the Widow when she stumbles; see her check for the Archer with curiosity and a kind of fondness.

It is sharp betrayal in Loki's eyes when he sees Fandral carefully cut through several inches of her battered hair (her knuckles white. hands twisted in her lap, with the idea he had a blade so close to her throat) and gently twist it into a long plait.

It is soft hurt in Thor's eyes that she will not venture near him if he bears his accursed hammer.

She still doesn't speak. But then, nothing needs to be said. They hear the screaming when she sleeps (it is always Loki that wakes her, looking as panicked as she feels). She doesn't know what she says when she screams, what cruelties slip through when she dreams but Loki is always there, his eyes wild and horror struck.

He never touches her, when she is awake. It's better that way.

The daylight hours are filled in hundreds of small ways. They are so careful and kind around her, including her even when their words are syrupy and incoherent once they reach her ears. Sometimes, she wonders what they were like before they brought her here, if her presence broke something they had together – something less deliberate, but hard won and greatly missed.

The healing stone the Doctor gave her upon her arrival is her touchstone, the scent reminding her of home – a hazy concept in her mind that is little more than something that calms her; there are no people that come to mind, no certain place. Just gold and light and the smell of herbs and magic. The Captain and Tony have both suggested she use it on her remaining wounds and scars, that are healing slowly, because it is the last one (ever? For her? She is uncertain) but she keeps it whole, within reach with the ever-present glass of water.

She spends an entire afternoon watching the Archer trying to steal her candy without being caught, watches the Doctor read steadily, carefully; watches Tony watch her in something that perhaps has turned into some kind of game because he pulls a chair into the centre of the room and stares at her more obviously a few minutes in.

She finds it curious, interesting, that Tony is movement, is talking and asking and answering except when he approaches her. No questions, even though she can see them bubbling underneath the surface, twisting and reforming and multiplying as he looks at her, and she is grateful that he holds them back, for now.

She wonders what he sees when he stares at her, if he looks for what is rippling just beyond the surface. If he recognizes what he sees.

The calm, easiness of the afternoon is broken as the sun sinks below the horizon, and they all gather together. The Archer's pile of candy wrappers is discovered to the general disapproval of the room, and Tony's concentration is shattered; he is skittering, distracted and talking again.

The small piece of candy forgotten in her hands is remembered once more as the Archer scowls, and she holds it out to him, and maybe there is a ghost of a smile on her lips or maybe that's just wishful thinking. He looks at her with an expression on his face she cannot describe, but she feels more exposed to his eyes than she did to Tony's gaze.

He takes the candy carefully, not touching her and nods once.

She has not noticed Loki, slipping into the room, swathed in black and looking haunted and almost accusatory towards her. She tenses, and he notices, pausing for a moment before continuing his approach.

He stops before her, and for a moment, he is unsure and it is an unfamiliar thing upon him, awkward and ill-fitting. In the worst of her memories, he is always so certain, so confident, his grip on his knives never faltering for a moment, and to see him lingering before her in such a way is jarring in a way that makes the memory of him inhuman, intangible, unreal.

He sits uncomfortably beside her, obviously and carefully measuring the distance between them.

Sometimes in that half-way place between sleep and awake, when she is trying to drag herself from her horrors, the memory of his hands upon her face when they found her is enough to calm her. She wonders if that means anything, because she finds the memory of the Captain's reassuring hand over hers offers the same sort of comfort, or if her desperation is simply clawing and clinging to anything that holds it all back.

He sighs and she wonders if he has been speaking to her, and she has lost the words again. But he leans over, enough that she presses herself back into the couch to maintain distance, and reaches out for her water glass.

Magic is acrid and alive on the back of her tongue and in the air as he calls it to hand and she watches a fine lace of frost form over the glass.

"You loved that trick when we were small." His words are self-deprecating and there is an edge there, a small misery, something uncovered that whispers at the edge of her mind but, for now, is misplaced.

What she offered the Archer was not the ghost of a smile, barely even the idea of one, because she offers one to Loki now.

Because amongst pillows and blankets, water and candy, there is something soft and safe in the idea of his child-self making patterns in frost and ice just for her long-ago child-self, for no other reason than because she loved it.


End file.
